Dream On: Sky Screen Logs 1&2

JUST AS AN EXPLANATION, THIS IS STILL LIKE THE NEXT CHAPTER IN THE STORY, BUT IT IS ALSO THE FIRST PART OF SEVERAL EXCERPTS FROM JEREMY DRAMES' JOURNAL WHICH ARE INTEGRATED INTO THE STORY AND WILL HELP EXPLAIN THINGS LATER ON.
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Jeremy Drames
Sky Screen Log #1
August 14, 2020
4:39 a.m.

I can’t sleep. My mind keeps on reeling. I still can’t believe that she’s gone. My mother was the only thing I had left, and now she’s gone as well. Her funeral was yesterday. I wasn’t able to go because every news station around was camped out on my front lawn. Our yard is small, so there was no way I could get past them. I didn’t understand why they were all there. My machine had failed, and there was no more to it than that.

But there was more. How ironic that the very day my mother was buried also happened to be the day that the machine intended to save her worked for the first time. It worked too late. I suppose the adjustments I made while she died must have been what saved this other person, but I don’t really care.

She left me.

How could she do that?

How could she leave me all alone here, in this land of primitive minds?

This is all her fault.

*****
#2
October 12, 2020
5:30 p.m.

I have finally discovered what went wrong with my first attempts to make the machine work. It was not that my calculations were wrong, but simply that I did not understand how my machine worked. I believed that the machine simply stimulated the brain, causing it to jolt the body out of a coma and back to perfect health. However, the true function of the machine is much more complicated than that.

My precious Dream Machine works almost exactly how its name implies, through dreams. As far as I am able to deduce from the mathematical equations I have discovered at the heart of the machine, its true purpose still simulates the mind. The difference from what I originally thought is that it stimulates the mind by creating beautiful dreams about the subject’s life, forcing the mind to look only on the true and good events on the subject’s past. These dreams then encourage the mind to stimulate itself.

Of course, at first it was not guaranteed to work, but now I have finished many calculations and have determined a series of sequences which, when applied to the subject’s mind in the correct order, can completely guarantee the survival of the subject. Not that they deserve it.

ALSO, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF JEREMY? SO FAR, DO YOU THINK THAT THE JOURNAL EXCERPTS WILL BE CONFUSING, OR ARE THEY A GOOD WAY TO EXPLAIN THINGS? WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL HAPPEN NEXT? (i ask this because, while I do have the story planned out already, I can always use inspiration.) :)

See him with his books:
Tree beside the brooks,
Drinking at the root
Till the branch bear fruit.
See him with his pen:
Written line, and then,
Better thought preferred,
Deep from in the Word.
~John Piper

"in this land of primitive minds" is kind of an odd way to put it, even for a genius. How revealing that he's blaming his mother when she's just died. A twisted way to grieve, yet he obviously is grieving. He built the Dream Machine for her, after all, and he hardens himself against using it for everyone who lived instead.
Once you wrote "simulate" instead of "stimulate."
Jeremy is intelligent, but stiff because of that. I wonder if he ever tried to make friends. The journal device works, especially because it reveals Jeremy's narrative voice. I think he'll shut himself off from real human contact and get absorbed into the Machine...

Oh, I was thinking about this, and I just want to ask you this: Do you really think that this would be authentic for this story to take place in the year 2020? I just realized the date of when this is taking place, and I don't really think things like this (the inventions, and such) will be that advanced in 2020. Right now we're living in 2012 so that's eight more years and we suddenly become all advanced in technology? I don't know, maybe we will become much more advanced in tech...tell me what you think. :)

Well, that's a good thought. I was thinking about that when I first was working on this, but I don't remember exactly why I chose 2020. I think that the reason I chose a date so close to the present is because I wanted it to be close enough to the present that most of the inventions are still similar. But, I do see what you mean. Maybe I will come up with a date farther into the future. Any suggestions? :)

See him with his books:
Tree beside the brooks,
Drinking at the root
Till the branch bear fruit.
See him with his pen:
Written line, and then,
Better thought preferred,
Deep from in the Word.
~John Piper

Hmm...well, let's see...okay, the telephone has been invented for awhile now, and we still have it except it's more advanced. So I guess you may want to choose a date not so far and far from today. I don't know, it's your story :)

that sounds reasonable. Thanks for your input! I will definitely take that into consideration. (if I haven't changed anything on apricotpie soon, that doesn't mean I'm ignoring it, I am just really busy) :)

See him with his books:
Tree beside the brooks,
Drinking at the root
Till the branch bear fruit.
See him with his pen:
Written line, and then,
Better thought preferred,
Deep from in the Word.
~John Piper

Now I feel even more sorry for the man in the endless nightmare. His grief, though twisted, is a deep emotion; one with which I can almost empathize.
On a side note, Drames writes that he feels god-like power. I think he would have said "I can do anything I wish" instead of "like".
I am confusedly enjoying this story. I only hope it is explained and resolved in the next few chapters.

As a year for the story you could go with 2030s or 2040s as science takes about ten years to make and ten to market. And based on the fact that we're actually somewhat able to read thoughts with a machine, I would say that 20 years from now isn't a bad approximation.